Vaccines for essential workers to be offered at Dominican as county aims to ramp up distribution
A vaccination clinic for essential workers — also called a point-of-distribution or POD — will be held at Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz on Saturday, Jan. 9, county health officials have announced. The goal is to administer 340 vaccines.
Dominican Hospital staff will oversee the vaccinations, which will not be for the general public but for workers who fall into tier 1 of phase 1A of California’s vaccination plan.
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The groups being targeted for vaccinations include workers at COVID-19 testing sites, residential care facilities, dialysis and dental centers, as well as local Planned Parenthood and Dientes Dental staff. Eligible people will be contacted through their employers.
Santa Cruz County has about 14,700 people in phase 1a, and each person will need two doses. County spokesperson Jason Hoppin said that the county is only getting shipments of about 2,000 doses per week — and so far has only distributed about 3,500 of the 7,800 doses it has received.
Hoppin said in a statement that unless vaccine delivery speeds up significantly, we “will be in phase 1A for four to six weeks.”
This is significantly slower than California’s Drafting Guidelines Vaccine working group had hoped for, as previous timelines have outlined vaccinations for phase 1B beginning in February.
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